Rebecca Hersher
Rebecca Hersher (she/her) is a reporter on NPR's Science Desk, where she reports on outbreaks, natural disasters, and environmental and health research. Since coming to NPR in 2011, she has covered the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, embedded with the Afghan army after the American combat mission ended, and reported on floods and hurricanes in the U.S. She's also reported on research about puppies. Before her work on the Science Desk, she was a producer for NPR's Weekend All Things Considered in Los Angeles.
Hersher was part of the NPR team that won a Peabody award for coverage of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, and produced a story from Liberia that won an Edward R. Murrow award for use of sound. She was a finalist for the 2017 Daniel Schorr prize; a 2017 Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting fellow, reporting on sanitation in Haiti; and a 2015 NPR Above the Fray fellow, investigating the causes of the suicide epidemic in Greenland.
Prior to working at NPR, Hersher reported on biomedical research and pharmaceutical news for Nature Medicine.
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Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price is touring communities that have been hit hard by painkiller overdoses and heroin. He says, when it comes to opioid abuse, "We're losing as a nation." -
Old Italian violins like those made by Stradivari are famous for their ability to project their sound. But a study found people in a blind test thought new violins projected better than old ones. -
Fasting every other day is no better for losing weight or keeping it off than restricting calories every day, a study suggests. And it's yet another example of how hard it is to study fasting. -
Researchers tested more than 3,000 people at Munich's Oktoberfest beer festival. They found getting drunk was associated with abnormal heart rhythms. -
The agency expanded its warnings about prescription cough and pain medications that contain the narcotics codeine or tramadol, saying they can cause dangerously slow breathing in some kids. -
Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley have figured out why shoelaces seem to come untied at the worst moments, like when you're running. -
The overall increase in the number of Americans with health insurance draws attention to counties where the uninsured rate is still high, many of them in states that chose not to expand Medicaid.
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Exposure to the tiny fibers in asbestos can lead people who work around the material to develop mesothelioma, a cancer of the thin membranes that line the chest and abdomen. -
Six questions like "How often do you procrastinate?" can help doctors identify adults with ADHD, researchers say. They estimate that the disorder impairs daily functions for about 8 percent of adults. -
A New York City hospital has created a playlist of songs with the ideal tempo for CPR, although previous research suggests there is more to good chest compressions than just the right tempo. -
Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin says preventing suicide among military veterans is his "number one clinical priority," and that he is working to fill some 45,000 open jobs in the agency. -
A task force says there is not enough evidence to recommend testing, or not testing, people with no symptoms for celiac disease, and that people who think they do have symptoms should see a doctor.
